{"id":38048,"date":"2012-09-05T14:09:27","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T18:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=38048"},"modified":"2012-09-28T13:40:49","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T17:40:49","slug":"horror-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/05\/horror-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Horror Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This month marks Stephen King\u2019s sixty-fifth birthday, more than half a lifetime since he released The Shining<\/em>, a novel inspired by the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. I\u2019ve passed by the Stanley Hotel two times, between which I lived a scene that Stephen King could have written.<\/p>\n

The first time, a Saturday morning a few weeks before my graduation from the University of Colorado, I was riding in my roommate Julie\u2019s car toward an Estes Park hiking trail. The hotel was grand, white, old-timey, and supposedly haunted, although not as isolated as the hotel in the movie. As we passed, our ponytails blowing out the open windows, the Rocky Mountains encircling us like a hug, I rested my feet on the dash, happy. Three years earlier, driving cross-country together, Julie and I had become best friends. Now, we hated separating even to sleep. Every morning, we woke up, turned on the TLC channel, one of the only channels we got, and danced in our living room while watching shows about makeovers and brides. Throughout the day, unless we were in class, we were together. We believed that this was life. Once, a guy took us both on a date. \u201cI thought I had to,\u201d he told us later. In Julie\u2019s car, the familiar smell of the interior soothed me. Out the window, the day was perfect, the sky huge. When it\u2019s cloudless, a Colorado sky resembles a great, empty aquarium.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When we reached the trailhead to Gem Lake and stood stretching our hamstrings, a man sprinted down the trail, his backpack bouncing. He saw us and stopped, bending to rest his hands on his knees, holding up one finger, signaling us to wait while he caught his breath. He was a typical Colorado sort\u2014high socks and hiking boots, unruly gray beard, stocky calves. But there was nothing typical about what he told us: \u201cGunshot,\u201d he panted. \u201cBy the lake.\u201d He stood up straight and twisted to glance up the trail. Then he turned back to us. \u201cI think she\u2019s still alive,\u201d he said. \u201cI think she\u2019s still twitching. Someone\u2019s gotta get to her quick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Julie and I looked at each other. We looked at the man. He was using the collar of his T-shirt to wipe sweat from his forehead. These were the days before the whole world had cell phones, but I had been in love the previous semester with a guy who habitually disappeared. Oblivious to the rules of dating, I\u2019d bought a cell phone to make myself as available as possible. That relationship was long gone, but I fished the phone from my backpack. I handed it to the hiker and told him that we\u2019d run up the trail, that he should run down until he hit cell phone range, call 911, and then come meet us. Beyond that, we had no plan of action. Julie told me later that, as we hiked toward the lake, she\u2019d imagined pressing her fleece pullover into the bullet hole to stop the blood. My fantasies were less benevolent. The Stanley Hotel still fresh in my mind, I had one eye out for a gunman lurking in the spruce trees.<\/p>\n

Silently, we fell into the lull of hiking, the soles of our boots beating a rhythm on the dirt. Julie reached our destination a few minutes before I did. When she doubled back, her face was white, her ponytail askew. She led me to the top of the trail where the earth flattened out and a lake gleamed, the trees gathered around like spectators. We sat on one side of a large boulder. \u201cDon\u2019t go over there,\u201d she said, nodding toward the other side. \u201cYou don\u2019t need to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIs she dead?\u201d<\/p>\n

Julie put her head on her knees. After a pause, she said, \u201cThe gun\u2019s still by her hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe shot herself.\u201d<\/p>\n

I shivered.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer brains are everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

There was no Stephen King character on the loose. We weren\u2019t in danger. We were just in very close proximity to death.<\/p>\n

Sitting there, I remembered the first time I heard of suicide. I was six years old, home for a snow day, and my mother was watching TV. A newscaster mentioned a man who had \u201cshot himself in the mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid he die?\u201d I asked my mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Why,<\/em> I thought, would anyone want to die on a snow day? <\/em>Now I had a similar question: How could a person come up here where the colors were perfect\u2014the lake silver, the trees green, the sky blue\u2014and find no reason to live?<\/p>\n

Of course, I wanted to see her. But even to my best friend, I couldn\u2019t admit that. My curiosity embarrassed me. So I stayed where I was, wondering if the woman\u2019s eyes were open, like the eyes of dead soldiers in movies. I wanted to know if she was really still twitching, the way the man had said.<\/p>\n

Soon, other hikers found the body and joined us. They sat, removed their backpacks, passed around water bottles. We made small talk, the way hikers do, as the sun warmed our bare limbs. I kept thinking of the blood. The brains. Outside the body where they belonged, how did such things react to heat? Did blood congeal? Did brains dry up?<\/p>\n

Someone made a death joke and the rest of us forced a laugh.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a thing,\u201d said someone else. \u201cIt\u2019s beautiful up here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBeautiful,\u201d everyone murmured. And then there was nothing to say.<\/p>\n

When the man appeared with my cell phone, he was accompanied by a Search and Rescue team, who divided us, looked through our packs, examined our Clif Bars, and questioned us as murder suspects.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo,\u201d one of them said to me, as he scribbled in a notebook. \u201cDid you kill her?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t even seen her.\u201d<\/p>\n

I hoped he\u2019d tell me to take a peek, just to refresh my memory. Now,<\/em> he\u2019d say, you\u2019ve seen her. Did you kill her or not?<\/em><\/p>\n

Instead, they let us go. We hiked down without a word. At the trailhead, Victim\u2019s Assistance awaited us with teddy bears and pillows. Julie began to cry, but we refused souvenirs and headed back to her car.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s never tell anyone this story,\u201d I said as we drove back to Boulder.<\/p>\n

\u201cNever,\u201d she agreed. But of course we would tell it.<\/p>\n

When we passed the Stanley Hotel the second time, it looked creepier than it had that morning, ominous, as if the red roof were painted with blood. The weather remained perfect, but the air felt strange. The familiarity of the car no longer soothed me. My seatbelt was suffocating; I kept pulling the strap away from my body. I thought I\u2019d never get comfortable.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t hit Stephen King until long after he wrote The Shining<\/em> that he\u2019d written about himself\u2014an alcoholic author losing his mind. And it would take me years, and dozens of retellings, to understand the story about that day at Gem Lake: It wasn\u2019t just the death that unsettled me, that idyllic lake as a backdrop for horror, but the reminder that everything ends. I was about to lose all this\u2014driving around Colorado with Julie, the cozy life of a college student. The end of youth is a kind of death, too.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

A couple of days later, Julie saw a cop in a coffee shop in Boulder and asked him if he knew anything about the suicide at Gem Lake. He told her that the woman had been missing for three days. Her family had been frantic. When they found her body, everyone was mystified. She\u2019d been severely disabled. She\u2019d had difficulty walking. How had she made it to the top of that trail? He shook his head. \u201cShe must have really wanted to die there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Julie told him that she\u2019d found the body. \u201cAnd now every time I close my eyes, I see that poor woman with her brains blown out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cop sipped his coffee and nodded. \u201cThat\u2019s normal,\u201d he told her. \u201cIt will go away.\u201d<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

It did go away. And then we did. And we became the kind of friends who miss each other, who visit when we can. Five years later, in a hospital room, I held Julie\u2019s first baby.<\/p>\n

For a long time, whenever I told anyone our story, I wanted to say that I\u2019d seen the body. Sometimes I did say that. I just wished so much that I\u2019d seen it, that I\u2019d lived the more interesting version. But I don\u2019t wish that anymore. I was about to graduate. About to grow up. Soon enough, I\u2019d see plenty.<\/p>\n


Diana Spechler is the author of<\/em> Who by Fire<\/a> and<\/em> Skinny<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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This month marks Stephen King\u2019s sixty-fifth birthday, more than half a lifetime since he released The Shining, a novel inspired by the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. I\u2019ve passed by the Stanley Hotel two times, between which I lived a scene that Stephen King could have written. The first time, a Saturday morning a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":404,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4393],"tags":[8576,4110,6024,4111,8577],"class_list":["post-38048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person","tag-stanley-hotel","tag-stephen-king","tag-suicide","tag-the-shining","tag-true-crime"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHorror Story by Diana Spechler<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"September 5, 2012 \u2013 This month marks Stephen King\u2019s sixty-fifth birthday, more than half a lifetime since he released The Shining, a novel inspired by the Stanley Hotel in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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